ISI denies links with militants as claimed in Guantanamo dossiers
April 26th, 2011 - 11:00 am ICT by ANI
Islamabad, April 26(ANI): The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has denied claims made against it in the Guantanamo dossiers, saying that it has no links whatsoever with militants.
The US military classified Pakistan’s premium spy agency as a terrorist support entity in 2007, and used association with it as a justification to detain prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay.
A document made available to The New York Times, said that detainees who were allegedly associated with the ISI “may have provided support to al-Qaeda or the Taliban, or engaged in hostilities against US or Coalition forces.”
Commenting on the allegations, Inter Services Public Relations’ Director General Athar Abbas denied that the ISI has any links with militant organisations, The Nation reports.
In an interview with a TV channel, the ISPR DG said that intelligence agencies of several countries had links with militants in the past.
The document in question- “JTF-GTMO Matrix of Threat Indicators for Enemy Combatants”- apparently dates from 2007, according to its classification code, and is part of a trove of 759 files on detainees held in the Guantanamo Bay, the US military prison in Cuba.
The ISI, along with al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah and the Iranian intelligence, are among 32 groups on the list of “associated forces,” which also includes Egypt’s Islamic Jihad, headed by al-Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Earlier this month, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Admiral Mike Mullen, had also said that the “ISI has a longstanding relationship with extremist networks”. (ANI)
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